What Canada’s lax gun laws are costing us … in blood

The monstrous scale of the gun problem in the United States blinds us to the fact that we’ve got a gun problem too.

We get all holier-than-thou every time we hear about the latest gun massacre in the U.S. — at an office Christmas luncheon in San Bernardino, at a Marine Corps recruiting office in Chattanooga, at a community college campus in Oregon. We shouldn’t be smug.

Their gun problem is ours as well. When Canadians start shooting, they often use a gun made in the U.S. and smuggled across the border.

Yes, gun ownership rates are lower here. It’s also true that gun-related homicide rates in Canada are about seven times lower than they are in the United States. (Our rate is 0.5 per 100,000 people versus 3.5 per 100,000 in the U.S.) But are comparative rates supposed to comfort the family of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, the young soldier who was murdered last year while performing ceremonial guard duty at the national war monument?

He was shot in the back three times by a fellow Canadian who hated Canadian military involvement in the Middle East. The shooter used a low-tech, lever-action Winchester rifle, like the gun TV cowboy Lorne Green toted around the Ponderosa.

The Mounties still can’t seem to figure out where Cirillo’s killer got his gun. They haven’t dropped the investigation because they still want to put an illegal gun dealer out of business and behind bars. The police also think tracing the provenance of the Winchester might lead to other would-be terrorists.

The San Bernardino massacre last week was awful. But we can’t forget that we’ve had our own mass shootings in Canada. Mayerthorpe, Alberta ten years ago — four Mounties killed. Moncton, New Brunswick last year — three Mounties killed. Last Sunday was the heartbreaking 26th anniversary of the murder of 14 women at École Polytechnique de Montréal. Friends and families still gather to mourn. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the memorial service. Once again, flags at federal buildings and other locations across the country were flown at half-staff.

In one hour, one misogynous man — with one gun — snuffed out 14 lives.

Mass murders aren’t easily forgotten. Nor should they be. But even a single gun death is a needless tragedy for someone’s friends and family. They never forget.

Why are our gun death rates fifty times higher than those in Japan? Why are they almost ten times higher than British and German rates?

Bowing to pressure from the gun lobby, the Harper government never implemented regulations to force manufacturers to stamp guns with markings that would make it easier for police to trace a weapon’s origin.

Why are Canadian rates at least twice as high as those in Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Australia?

Are we inherently more violent? No. These other countries have lower rates because they have tougher gun laws. It’s really that simple.

In Australia, it took a massacre of 35 people in a Tasmanian café in 1996 to rally the political will to bring in strict gun control laws. The reforms included a mandatory gun buy-back program that cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars. The Australian gun death rate is now about half of what it was before the reforms.

Handguns are of particular concern to law enforcement agencies in Canada, and elsewhere, because these weapons are easily concealed and smuggled. They are the preferred murder weapon of criminal gangs.

About half of the gun deaths in Canada are gang-related, StatsCan says. And almost two-thirds of the victims of gun violence are people who were strangers to the shooter. This means a lot of innocent bystanders are being wounded and killed by gangs.

In Ottawa, police say most of the city’s 42 shooting incidents so far this year are gang-related. The police chief beefed up his guns-and-gangs squad last month. The mayor also is asking city council for approval to hire more cops.

Armed street gangs are a scourge in big cities across the country. After a period of decline, the street gang problem began trending up two years ago. But the Conservative government’s gun policy remained fixated on dismantling the federal long-gun registry system — a good idea that was badly implemented and managed by the previous Liberal government.

Stephen Harper’s government could have done so much more on gun control. Bowing to pressure from the gun lobby, the Harper government never implemented regulations to force manufacturers to stamp guns with markings that would make it easier for police to trace a weapon’s origin. For ten years, the Tories kept delaying the regs. The gun lobby argued the marking plan would be too costly to implement, costing maybe as much as $200 per gun.

The Liberals now say they will implement the gun marking regulations quickly. The new government promises to implement enhanced background checks for those buying handguns. They will require gun shops to keep better records of gun inventories and sales. The Liberals also will require gun owners to get a permit if they intend to transport guns from one location to another.

They also promise to provide $100 million a year to the provinces to help pay for more guns-and-gangs police squads. The Liberals say they want to invest in new technologies that can better detect guns during border checks.

Will these reforms be enough? We’ll see.

I’m a city guy; personally I don’t see much need for anyone to own a gun. I don’t hunt to put meat on my table and I don’t see what’s so sporting about shooting unarmed wildlife at a distance with a high-powered rifle and telescopic scope. But my grandfather had a farm and he kept a shotgun to kill gophers. (Maybe that’s still the only way to eradicate these pests.)

So, I’m open to a discussion. I can be persuaded by a rational argument to allow private gun ownership, under effective controls, for people who really need guns. But we’re never going to have that debate if we stick our heads in a gopher hole and pretend we don’t have a problem.

We have to start by acknowledging that our proximity to the U.S. means their gun problems eventually — inevitably — sweep north.

Jeff Sallot is one of Canada’s most experienced and respected political writers. A graduate of the Kent State University journalism school, he shared a Pulitzer Prize with colleagues at The Akron Beacon-Journal for his eyewitness coverage of the massacre of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard during an anti-war demonstration. He worked for The Globe and Mail for more than three decades, much of the time as a political journalist based in Ottawa. He started his career in political journalism at The Toronto Star when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister. He taught journalism at Carleton University for seven years until he retired in 2014.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

More from iPolitics

X

Join the conversation. It gets feisty!

Author

Jeff Sallot founded Reportinglab.com in 2010. He taught at Carleton University from 2007 to 2013 after a long reporting career at The Globe and Mail and globeandmail.com. He’s been the Globe’s bureau chief in Moscow, Ottawa and Edmonton, and the lead political correspondent for the Globe’s website during federal elections. He’s reported from every corner of Canada, and from more than 30 foreign countries on five continents. Jeff also was part of a team at the Akron Beacon Journal that won a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for its coverage of the 1970 Kent State University tragedy. He now makes frequent broadcast appearances as a commentator on journalism and political issues.